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Apr 21, 2017, 08:55 AM
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T...
I wish I am special and memorable to you...
From "The Man with the Beautiful Voice":
Quote:
Some therapies are easy, the patient requiring only the lightest touch, the slightest push to go down into the deeper levels of her internal world. These are the ones for which a therapist gives thanks. Others are more difficult, leaving both therapist and patient anxious and frustrated as they fumble and stumble in search of clues that will lead them to understanding. Most are somewhere in between, sessions in which week after week the patient recites the problems of his external life without being able to probe very deeply into his internal one. For me, at least, these give the most trouble since they don’t bring the rewards and excitement that come from working with the easy ones, nor do they offer the challenge of the difficult ones.
Like most therapists I work against my negative feelings, trying to sort out why I feel the way I do, striving to distinguish what’s my issue from what belongs to the patient in the hope that I can use the information to facilitate the work of therapy. But in the final analysis, I know that, as with anyone else, my attachment is strongest to those people who interest me. Sometimes it’s because the work itself raises some special theoretical or clinical problems, sometimes because the person is particularly stimulating emotionally or intellectually. Sometimes, it’s because the patient does the work easily and makes me feel competent, sometimes because he touches something inside me in some way I can’t always define. And sometimes a patient holds a special place in my heart because with her I learn something important about myself.
For therapy is not a one-way affair. We don’t just “treat” patients as the patient-therapist model suggests. It’s a process that forces us to confront ourselves in unexpected and often difficult ways. And in the giving-getting exchange of therapy it’s safe to say that I’ve gotten as much as I’ve given, and that my patients deserve credit for a good part of my own growth and development over these past decades.
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